In early March, 2013, NLM will be inviting DOCLINE libraries to participate in a survey on interlibrary loan practices and needs of the health science libraries in the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM) and Canada. The survey has 30 questions, with an estimated completion time of about 12 minutes. This is your opportunity to help shape resource sharing programs of the future!

NLM initiated this survey to investigate the reasons for the declining use of DOCLINE and current practices of libraries regarding resource sharing. The number of ILL requests entered into DOCLINE has decreased 46% since 2002, while Loansome Doc requests declined 68% in that same period. Your response to this survey is vitally important, and will help NLM to understand the resource sharing needs of librarians in the NN/LM and Canada, and how best to meet those needs now and in the future! The invitation email will be sent via SurveyMonkey to the address of each library’s ILL contact reported in their DOCLINE institution record. If the listed ILL contact has previously opted out of receiving emails from SurveyMonkey, please contact DOCLINE to receive a link to the survey.

The National Library of Medicine has announced its participation in the inaugural year of the National Digital Stewardship Residency (NDSR), a ground-breaking new program created by the Library of Congress (LC), in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The program enables 10 recent Master’s program graduates in relevant fields to complete a paid, nine-month residency at various institutions in the Washington, DC area. Beginning in September, 2013, accepted residents will attend an intensive two-week digital stewardship workshop at the Library of Congress. Thereafter, residents will move to a host institution to work on significant digital stewardship projects. These projects will allow them to acquire hands-on knowledge and skills involving the collection, selection, management, long-term preservation, and accessibility of digital assets. The entire list of projects is available on the NDSR Web site.

NLM will host a resident to develop a thematic Web archive collection. The resident will create a collection of Web content on a specific theme or topic, such as medicine and art, or the e‐patient movement. This project builds on a pilot Web archive collection completed by NLM last year and featured in LC’s The Signal in October 2012. The final Web archive collection will become part of the permanent collection of NLM. The resident will be embedded in NLM’s History of Medicine Division under the mentorship of Christie Moffatt, Manager, Digital Manuscripts Program.

In addition to NLM, the inaugural NDSR host institutions include Association of Research Libraries, Dumbarton Oaks, Folger Shakespeare Library, Library of Congress, National Security Archive, PBS, Smithsonian Institution Archives, World Bank, and University of Maryland Libraries and Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities. LC and IMLS are accepting applications for the NDSR until April 5, 2013. Apply online to be a part of NDSR’s inaugural class!

On February 21st, NLM released a minor update to DOCLINE. This maintenance increased the length of the citation, article author, and article title fields on the DOCLINE receipt. The article author and title fields were increased to 60 characters, while the citation field was increased to 100 characters, to allow for the increasingly long citations in PubMed. There are no changes to the PubMed interface or request functionality.

Action item for Lenders: The combination of a long citation and the borrower’s comments field, as well as document delivery addresses, may cause the receipt to print on two pages depending on your browser settings. If you encounter requests that print on two pages, please see the FAQ on “How do I prevent Receipts from printing on two pages?”

Action item for Borrowers: Review the “Comments to Lenders” field of your DOCLINE record to ensure they contain only unique information necessary for lenders. Remove any duplicate information that may be displayed automatically on the receipt. This is also a good time to review your DOCLINE Options, Borrowing Preferences, document delivery addresses, and library group memberships. See the DOCLINE FAQ page about reviewing your Institution record. Feel free to contact your RML at 1-800-338-7657 for any questions or assistance.

The release of a new version of DOCLINE occasionally reveals problems with a user’s browser settings. If you are experiencing a problem in DOCLINE, first check your browser settings and then also clear your browser cache. If the browser settings are correct and you have cleared your cache, complete the “Report a Problem” form found under “Contact Us” in DOCLINE. The form gathers information that is useful to NLM in investigating the issue.

In November, 2012, NIH announced upcoming changes to the public access policy reporting requirements, and funding delays for grant awards that are not in compliance with the policy. This week, NIH announced that the compliance measures outlined in the November guide notice will be implemented for all awards with anticipated start dates on or after July 1, 2013, as stated in NIH Guide Notice NOT-13-042. The public access compliance monitor is a web-based tool that allows administrators to monitor policy compliance across their particular institution. A three-minute YouTube video is available for a quick look at its features. More in-depth training is available from a recording of a public webinar, held in January, 2013, and designed for compliance officials at grantee institutions. Additionally, the NIH Office of Extramural Research (OER) presents conversations with NIH staff members, through its All About Grants podcast series. Check out the new episodes on public access, designed for researchers and compliance officials, featuring NIH staff involved in public access policy implementation.

A new database developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), with support from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), can help software developers create better Electronic Health Records (EHRs) for the care of children. The children’s EHR format establishes a blueprint for EHRs to better meet the needs of health care providers and pediatric patients by combining best practices in clinical care, information technology, and insights from experts in children’s health. Since few EHRs have been created with children’s needs in mind, gaps in functionality, data elements, and other areas tend to occur. The format guides EHR developers in understanding the requirements for functionality, data standards, usability and interoperability of an EHR system to more optimally support the provision of health care to children, especially those enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). The format is readily accessible and adoptable by EHR developers for use during product development or enhancement.

The children’s EHR format was authorized by the 2009 Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA). The format includes a minimum set of data elements and applicable data standards that can be used as a blueprint for EHR developers seeking to create a product that can capture the types of health care components most relevant for children. Child-specific data elements and functionality recommendations are sorted into topic areas that include prenatal and newborn screening tests, immunizations, growth data, information for children with special health care needs and child abuse reporting. The EHR format provides guidance on structures that permit interoperable exchange of data, including data collected in school-based, primary, and inpatient care settings. The format is compatible with other EHR standards and facilitates quality measurement and improvement through the collection of clinical quality data.

In addition to providing guidance to developers, the format can provide guidance for EHR system purchasers and policy makers. For example, policy makers and purchasers can use the requirements when assessing functionality of EHRs. More information about the children’s EHR format is available on the AHRQ website.

The Planning Committee of the MLGSCA/NCNMLG Chapters of the Medical Library Association invites proposals for contributed papers and posters for the 2013 Joint Meeting. The meeting will be held in La Jolla, CA, on July 24-26, 2013, at the University of California, San Diego, Price Center. The conference theme is Waves of Change, Oceans of Opportunity, which can encompass a variety of topics. Projects, services, innovations, lessons learned, and success stories which illustrate how we are celebrating opportunity during continual change are all possible paper or poster topics. The deadline for submissions is March 31, 2013.

The poster session will be held on Thursday, July 25, 2013, from 1:30 to 3:00 in the Exhibit Hall. Posters may continue to be displayed through the last exhibit break on Friday July 26, 2013, at 4:00pm. Contributed paper sessions are Thursday, July 25, from 10:30am to noon and Friday, July 26, from 10:15-11:45am, and occur in three concurrent sessions each day. For both poster and paper proposals, submit a 250 word abstract describing your project. Include your name, position title, address, phone number, and email address. Send poster submissions to Rebecca Birr via email. Please put “poster proposal” in the subject line. Send contributed papers submissions to Annie Hughes via email. Please put “contributed paper proposal” in the subject line. More information will be added to the conference website as it becomes available.

A “Download History” link will be added to the PubMed, MeSH and NLM Catalog Advanced page History feature. Using this link will generate History entries in the file “history.csv.” Since Microsoft Excel is typically unable to display or print more than a maximum of 1024 characters in a cell, users with long queries may want to open the CSV file with a text editor to display the complete searches.

The search bar will be updated to list up to the last four databases searched at the top of the pull-down database menu. The alphabetic list with all the databases will also include the recently searched databases. Further details about these changes are available in the 2013 January/February issue of the NLM Technical Bulletin.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Disaster Technical Assistance Center (DTAC) has just announced release of the Disaster Response Template Toolkit, a new installment in the Disaster Behavioral Health Information Series. It contains a comprehensive collection of online resources and materials, as well as editable templates that can be easily tailored to meet the needs of any disaster response program.

The Printed Materials section contains customizable public education materials for use by disaster behavioral health response programs to provide outreach, psycho-education, and recovery news for disaster survivors. These materials, geared toward the general public, provide information about common disaster reactions and ways to cope. The Messaging through Other Media section contains tips for writing television, radio, and newspaper public service announcements (PSAs), as well as samples of print and radio PSAs. There are also links and examples of disaster response program websites, social networking pages, and blogs.

Within each section of this toolkit, “do it yourself” templates are provided in various formats, with space provided for each program to incorporate its own logo or contact information. You will find templates for the following products:

• Brochures for adults, older adults, or children, about common disaster responses and ways of coping;
• Door hangers with common signs of disaster stress, ways to reduce stress, and common reactions to trigger events, such as the holidays;
• Editable tip sheets with information on managing stress, coping with disaster anniversaries, and helping children cope with the disaster;
• Newsletters, wallet cards, and postcards, with broad messaging and room to add your program’s contact information.

It is hoped that the Disaster Response Template Toolkit will be a helpful resource for the disaster response programs in your institution!

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the Electronic Data Methods (EDM) Forum have announced the official launch of eGEMs (Generating Evidence and Methods to improve patient outcomes). eGEMs is a new peer-reviewed, open access journal designed to curate a knowledge base of emerging lessons learned, focusing on using electronic clinical data to advance research and quality improvement, with the overall goal of improving patient and community outcomes. Authors are welcome to submit papers, images, or other media focused on the four themes of data methods, informatics, governance, and the learning health system. Submissions are published upon acceptance.

For the first time, the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey is providing access to detailed demographic data on congressional districts for the 113th Congress. These statistics include age, education, occupation, income and veteran status. They are accessible via Easy Stats, the Census Bureau’s new online tool offering quick and easy access to American Community Survey data. These statistics are drawn from the most recent one-year American Community Survey sample, tabulated for redistricted congressional districts of the 113th Congress. Easy Stats provides statistics on a wide range of topics, such as income, occupation, housing and education, down to the local level, including states, counties, cities and towns, and now, congressional districts.

I tried Easy Stats and obtained useful demographic data for sample counties that I was able to export into an Excel spreadsheet! Consider using this tool when you are applying for funding for your communities!

The official press release is from the US Census Bureau.